O 


GOAT- 
FEATHERS 


ELLIS  PARKER  BUTLER 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 
Kate  Gordon  Moore 


33oofc8  fc?  (Kllte  fhtfeer  38tttler 

PUBLISHED    BY 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


GOAT-FEATHERS. 

PHILO  GUBB,  CORRESPONDENCE- 
SCHOOL  DETECTIVE.  With  illus 
trations. 

8WATTY:  A  STORY  OF  REAL  BOYS. 
Illustrated. 


Goat -leathers 


GOAT- 
FEATHERS 


BY 


'Parker 
Sutler 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

The  Riverside  Press  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,    1918,    BY   THE   CROWELL   PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,    1919,   BY   ELLIS   PARKER   BUTLER 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


PS 


Goat  feathers 


857348 


GOAT- 
FEATHERS 

No  human  being  ever  tells 
the  whole  truth  about  him 
self.  We  seem  to  be  born 
liars  in  that  particular,  all  of  us,  and 
I  am  no  different.  I  'm  starting  out 
now  to  tell  the  bitter,  agonizing 
truth  about  myself,  but  before  I  am 
through  I  shall  probably  be  lying 
at  the  rate  of  a  mile  a  minute  and 
cracking  myself  up  something  aw 
ful  !  A  man  can  tell  only  so  much 
truth;  then  he  begins  to  wabble. 

The  truth  is,  I  ought  to  be  mak 
ing  as  much  money  as  Robert  W. 
Chambers,  and  winning  prizes  of 
honor  like  Ernest  Poole,  and  I  'm 

page  3 


Goat  leathers 

not.  I  ought  to  be  better  known  as 
a  humorist  than  George  Ade  and 
Mark  Twain  rolled  into  one,  and 
I  'm  not.  The  trouble  with  me  is 
that  I  am  always  too  ready  and  ea 
ger  to  break  away  and  go  gather 
ing  goat-feathers.  If  it  had  not  been 
for  that  I  might  be  a  millionaire  or 
the  President  of  the  United  States 
or  the  leading  American  Author, 
bound  in  RedRussialeather.  I  might 
have  been  a  Set  of  Books,  like  Sir 
Walter  Scott  or  Dickens  or  Balzac, 
and  when  people  passed  my  house 
the  natives  would  say,  "  No,  that 
is  n't  the  city  hall  or  the  court-house; 
that 's  where  Butler  lives."  Of 
course  some  strangers  would  say, 
"Butler,  the  grocer?"  but  that 
would  be  the  ignorant  few.  The 

page  * 


Goat -leathers 

real  people  would  whisper,  "  But 
ler,  the  Author! "  in  a  sort  of  sub 
dued  awe  and  remove  their  hats. 
Some  of  them  would  pick  a  blade 
of  grass  from  my  lawn  and  take  it 
home  to  hand  down  to  their  chil 
dren's  children  as  the  most  treas 
ured  family  possession.  As  it  is,  I 
have  gathered  so  many  goat-feath 
ers  that  half  the  people  introduce 
me  as  Ellis  Butler  Parker  and  the 
other  half  as  Butler  Parker  Ellis, 
and  if  there  is  a  ton  of  hay  growing 
on  my  lawn  nobody  bothers  to  pick 
a  pint.  My  father  has  to  cut  it  and 
rake  it  away. 

Goat-feathers,  you  understand, 
ire  the  feathers  a  man  picks  and 
sticks  all  over  his  hide  to  make  him 
self  look  like  the  village  goat.  It 

5 


Goat  leathers 

often  takes  six  days,  three  hours 
and  eighteen  minutes  to  gather  one 
goat-feather,  and  when  a  man  has 
it  and  takes  it  home  it  is  about  as 
useful  and  valuable  to  him  as  a 
stone-bruise  on  the  back  of  his  neck. 
I  have  recently  spent  several  days 
over  a  month  gathering  one  goat- 
feather,  and  as  a  reward  I  was 
grabbed  and  chased  after  another 
that  ate  up  two  weeks  and  three 
days  of  my  time.  Goat-feathers  are 
the  distractions,  side  lines  and  de 
flections  that  take  a  man's  atten 
tion  from  his  own  business  and  keep 
him  from  getting  ahead.  They  are 
the  Greatest  Thing  in  the  World 
— to  make  a  man  look  like  a  goat. 
I  think  I  can  claim,  without  fear 
of  dispute,  to  have  gathered  more 

page  6 


Goat -leathers 

goat-feathers  in  a  fifty-year  career, 
and  to  look  more  like  a  goat,  than 
any  other  man  living,  and  not  ex 
cepting  Pooh  Bah,  who  added  such 
a  pleasing,  goat-like  character  to 
Gilbert-and-Sullivan's  "  Mikado." 
Pooh  Bah,  poor  amateur!  could 
boast  only  that  he  was  First  Lord 
of  the  Treasury,  Lord  Chief  Jus 
tice,  Commander-in-Chief,  Lord 
High  Admiral,  Master  of  the  Buck 
Hounds,  Groom  of  the  Back  Stairs, 
Archbishop  ofTitipu,Lord  Mayor, 
Lord  Chamberlain,  Attorney-Gen 
eral,  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
Privy  Purse,  Private  Secretary, 
Lord  High  Auditor,  First  Commis 
sioner  of  Police,  Paymaster  Gen 
eral,  Judge  Ordinary,  Master  of  the 
Rolls,  Secretary  of  State  for  the 

page  7 


Goat -"Feathers 

Home  Department,  Groom  of  thr 
Second  Floor  Front,  and  Registrar. 
I  can  beat  that  all  to  pieces. 

When  I  wake  in  the  morning  as 
President  of  the  Authors'  League 
Fund  I  can  give  some  attention  to 
my  work  as  Publicity  Manager  of 
the  Liberty  Loan  Committee  while 
preparing  to  devote  an  hour  or  two 
to  the  Secretaryship  of  the  Arme 
nian  Relief  and  the  Treasurership 
of  the  Volunteer  Committee  for  the 
Fatherless  Children  of  France,  be 
fore  I  consider  my  duties  as  Vice- 
President  of  the  Flushing  Savings 
and  Loan  and  as  Vice-President, 
Director  and  Member  of  the  Dis 
count  Committee  of  the  Flushing 
National  Bank.  As  a  Councillor  and 
Member  of  the  Executive  Commit- 

page  8 


Goat  leathers 

tee  of  the  Authors'  League,  and  one 
of  the  Membership  Committee  of 
the  City  Club,  Governor  of  the  Tus- 
caroraClub  and  Publicity  Manager 
for  the  Flushing  Red  Cross,  Flush 
ing  Red  Cross  Drive  and  Queens- 
boro  Red  Cross  Drive  I  can  put  in 
a  few  hours  of  goat- feather  gather 
ing.  Night  may  come  without  my 
having  to  do  any  real  work,  but  if 
not  I  can  avoid  it  and  accumulate  a 
few  more  goat-feathers  as  Member 
of  the  Book  Committee  and  Execu 
tive  Committee  of  the  Queensboro 
Public  Library,  Member  of  the 
Queensboro  Committee  on  Train 
ing  Camp  Activities,  Executive 
Committeeman  of  the  Vigilantes, 
Authors'  Committeeman  of  the 
American  Defense  Society,  and  so 

page  9 


Goat  leathers 

on  for  hours  and  hours  and  hours. 
I  am  a  member  of  everything  but 
the  Mothers'  Club  of  Public  School 
20,  and  every  thing  takes  time  from 
my  legitimate  work.  I  estimate  that 
in  the  last  twenty  years  I  have  gath 
ered  twenty  thousand  pounds  of 
goat-feathers  at  a  cost  of  about  five 
doUars  a  pound,  and  the  whole  lot 
is  worth  about  twenty  cents. 

What  I  marvel  at  is  that  I  make 
a  living  at  all.  My  telephone  rings 
seven  thousand  eight  hundred  and 
six  times  a  day,  and  only  once  in 
the  last  eight  years  has  it  been  rung 
by  any  one  who  wanted  to  buy  a 
story  from  me.  The  other  eighty- 
two  million  times  it  was  rung  by 
people  who  wanted  me  to  gather  a 
new  crop  of  goat- feathers. 

page  10 


Goat -leathers 

At  one  time  I  moved  out  to  the 
barn  to  get  away  from  the  tele 
phone.  The  result  was  that  I  had  to 
come  down  out  of  the  second  story 
of  the  barn,  walk  across  my  prop 
erty,  enter  the  house,  and  go  up- 
stairsevery  time  the  telephone  rang. 
I  did  this  eighty-two  times  a  day, 
and  then  moved  back  to  the  house 
and  had  an  extension  telephone  put 
in  my  workroom  so  close  to  my  desk 
that  every  time  I  flexed  a  muscle  I 
knocked  the  'phone  off  its  table. 
This  made  it  much  handier  for  the 
goat-feather  distributers,  so  they 
called  me  up  oftener.  They  call  me 
before  I  am  out  of  bed,  when  I  am 
in  the  bathtub,  and  after  I  go  to  bed. 
Usually  they  call  me  to  the  'phone 
and  then  tell  me  to  wait  a  minute 

page  ii 


Goat -leathers 

until  Mr.  Jonesky  comes.  The  fav 
orite  times  for  calling  me  are  when 
I  am  in  the  bathtub,  when  I  am  at 
meals,  and  when  I  am  trying  to  con 
centrate  on  my  writing. 

I  am  not  blaming  any  one  for  this. 
I  did  not  have  to  rent  a  telephone. 
I  could  have  let  people  come  to  the 
house.  A  great  many  do  come  to  the 
house.  On  the  average,  it  takes  the 
person  who  comes  to  the  house  just 
one  hour  to  state  a  proposition  that 
could  be  put  in  a  six- word  telegram 
or  'phoned  in  one  minute.  The  visi 
tor  always  begins  with  a  few  neat 
remarks  about  "  Pigs  and  Pigs/' 
which  is  not  the  name  of  the  story, 
tells  how  his  grandmother  laughed 
over  it  until  she  swallowed  her 
false  teeth,  explains  that  his  grand- 

page  12 


Goat  leathers 

mother  was  one  of  the  Tootlecoms 
of  Worcester,  but  married  into  the 
Blahblah  family.  About  half  an  hour 
later  the  visitor  remarks,  "  I  know 
you  are  very  busy  and  I  hate  to  ask 
you,  but — "  Then  he  asks  me  to  do 
some  little  trifle  like  raising  $80,- 
000,000  in  Flushing  for  the  War 
Fund  of  the  One-Legged  Garden 
ers'  League,  which  has  a  plan  for 
planting  sweet  peas  in  the  trenches 
in  Mesopotamia.  "  We  know  you 
can  do  it,"  he  says  pleasantly.  I 
know  I  can  do  it,  too.  I  feel  the  great 
urge  of  ability  rise  within  me.  I 
don't  care  a  hang  for  Mesopotamia, 
or  for  sweet  peas  in  the  trenches 
there ;  but  it  is  something  I  can  do, 
and  I  go  ahead  and  do  it.  I  gather 
two  quarts  of  red,  white,  and  blue 

page  13 


Goat-Yeatbers 

goat-feathers,  give  eighteen  maga 
zine  editors  a  chance  to  forget  I  am 
alive,  and  find  at  the  end  of  the 
month  that  I  am  three  hundred  and 
forty  dollars  deeper  in  debt  than  I 
was  before. 

It  has  come  about  that  people  are 
actually  offended  if  I  don't  jump  into 
every  mad  goat- feather  quest  that 
is  proposed.  I  am  firmly  convinced 
that  there  is  now  extant  an  Associa 
tion  to  Prevent  Butler  Doing  a  Full 
Day's  Work.  I  don't  want  to  seem 
egotistical,  but  I  am  now  of  the 
opinion  that  the  Kaiser  started  the 
war  in  order  to  make  it  seem  neces 
sary  for  me  to  make  Four-Minute 
speeches  on  Food  Conservation, 
Give  Your  Binoculars,  and  Buy  a 
Thrift  Stamp. 

page  14 


Goat  leathers 

Of  course,  all  our  patriotic,  Lib 
erty  Loan,  Red  Cross,  Thrift  Stamp 
side-lining  is  n't  goat-feathering. 
The  genuine  variety  is  eagle-feather 
gathering,  and  I  am  as  proud  of 
my  eagle-feathers  as  I  am  sour  on 
my  goat-feathers. 

Now  it  is  a  fine  thing  to  be  treas 
urer  of  the  Flushing  Hospital,  and 
it  is  a  fine  thing  to  be  president  of 
the  Flushing  Country  Club,  but  the 
goat-feathers  pall  when  you  know 
that  the  reason  you  were  given 
those  glories  was  because  nobody 
else  would  take  them.  It 's  a  "  grand 
and  glorious  feelin'  "  to  know  you 
can  take  some  affair  and  make  it  a 
success,  or  a  near-success ;  but  it  is 
not  business.  A  man  may  make  a 
success  of  a  Flushing  Public  Play- 

pagt  15 


Goat -leathers 

ground  and  not  be  making  a  suc< 
cess  of  himself.  He  may  be  making 
a  goat  of  himself.  The  chances  are 
ten  to  one  that  he  is  making  a  goat 
of  himself. 

I  '11  never  get  the  Pulitzer  prize 
for  the  best  novel  or  for  the  best 
play,  but  if  there  was  a  Pulitzer 
prize  for  the  greatest  human  goat 
nobody  else  would  be  in  the  run 
ning.  I  have  not  got  goat-feathers 
by  the  dozen  or  by  the  pound  —  I 
have  them  by  the  bale.  I  estimate 
that  if  all  my  goat-feathers  were 
placed  end  to  end  they  would  reach 
from  the  bread  line  to  the  poor- 
house. 

It  is  just  possible  that  by  this  time 
you  may  gather  that  I  have  a  grouch 
on  myself.  If  so,  you  are  right.  To- 

page  1 6 


Goat  leathers 

day  I  am  forty-nine  years  and  six 
months  old,  and  as  a  bright  and 
shining  literary  light  I  am  exactly 
where  I  was  twelve  years  ago.  I 
am  twelve  years  older  and  have 
that  much  less  time  in  which  to 
complete  the  joy  of  making  good 
as  one  of  the  great  American  au 
thors.  Presently  the  infirmities  of 
age  will  begin  to  gnaw  at  me,  the 
moths  will  ruin  my  flossy  collec 
tion  of  goat- feathers,  all  those  who 
now  pat  me  on  the  back  because 
they  can  make  use  of  me  free  of 
charge  will  forget  that  I  am  alive, 
and  my  executors  will  shake  their 
heads  and  say,  "  Ain't  it  too  bad  he 
left  so  little!" 

Distraction  is  n't  really  good  for 
a  man  if  he  wants  to  reach  a  goal. 

page  17 


Goat -F fathers 

No  salesman  ever  got  very  far  by 
carrying  too  many  side  lines.  The 
poorest  sort  of  monopoly  for  any 
man  to  undertake  is  a  monopoly  of 
goat-feathers. 

No  man  in  the  world  had  a  bet 
ter  chance  to  make  himself  the 
Great  American  Humorist  than  I 
had  when  I  wrote  "  Pigs  is  Pigs." 
I  had  a  good,  solid  foundation  of 
fairly  good  humorous  work  under 
it  and  the  little  story  had  a  wonder 
ful  success.  The  thing  for  me  to 
have  done  then  was  to  stick  to  hu 
mor,  regardless  of  anything.  I  have 
written  dainty  stories,  sympathetic 
stories,  serious  stories,  all  kinds  of 
stories,  but  not  many  humorous 
stories.  It  is  surprising  how  often 
editors  have  had  to  announce  "  A 

page  1 8 


Goat -leathers 

story  that  shows  this  famous  hu 
morist  in  an  entirely  new  vein." 

Taking  literature  as  a  business, 
I  can  say  that  a  humorist  should 
have  no  "new  vein."  Neither  does 
a  plumber  succeed  as  a  plumber  by 
spending  a  large  share  of  his  work 
ing  hours  making  violins.  No  one 
ever  succeeds  by  allowing  himself 
to  be  deflected  from  the  most  im 
portant  business  of  life,  which  is 
making  the  most  of  the  best  that  is 
in  him.  Even  a  cow  does  better  if 
she  sticks  close  to  the  business  of 
eating  grass  and  chewing  the  cud. 
When  she  starts  in  to  learn  to  whis 
tle  like  a  catbird  and  to  flit  from 
field  to  field  like  a  butterfly  it  is  safe 
to  say  she  is  no  longer  a  success  in 
life.  When  a  cow  strays  from  plain 

page  I  Q 


Goat -leathers 

milk-producing  methods  and  be 
gins  climbing  trees  and  turning 
somersaults,  she  may  be  more  pic 
turesque,  but  she  is  gathering  noth 
ing  but  goat- feathers.  Seven  farm 
ers,  a  school-teacher  and  a  tin 
peddler  may  line  up  along  the  fence 
and  applaud  her  all  afternoon  until 
she  is  swelled  with  pride,  but  when 
she  gets  back  to  the  barn  at  sun 
down  she  will  not  give  much  milk. 
She  will  not  be  known  as  a  milch 
cow  long ;  she  will  be  a  low  grade 
of  corned  beef,  a  couple  of  flank 
steaks  and  a  few  pairs  of  three-dol 
lar  shoes. 

I  can  sit  down  to  write  a  story 
about  a  man  who  fell  off  a  bridge 
and  landed  in  a  kettle  of  tar  on  a 
canal  boat  and,  before  I  have  com- 

page  20 


Goat -leathers 

pleted  a  full  paragraph,  I  can  have 
stopped  to  clean  the  small  o,  small 
e,  and  small  a  of  my  typewriter 
with  a  toothpick,  stopped  to  think 
about  the  pearl  buttons  on  a  vest  I 
owned  in  1 8  94,  the  Spanish- Amer 
ican  War,  what  the  French  word 
for  "illumination'*  is,  and  whether 
I  paid  my  last  Liberty  Loan  install 
ment.  Before  I  have  finished  that 
first  paragraph  I  may  have  stopped 
to  fill  my  fountain  pen,  gone  down 
town  to  attend  a  meeting  of  the  Red 
Cross  Committee,  started  to  recat- 
alogue  my  published  stories,  and 
taken  a  trip  to  Chicago.  Before  I 
have  got  to  the  first  period  in  the 
first  sentence  I  may  have  decided 
that  I  would  not  have  a  man  fall  off 
the  bridge  but  have  a  woman  fall 

page  21 


Goat  leathers 

offit,  that  I  would  not  have  her  fall 
off  a  bridge  but  off  the  Wool  worth 
Building,  that  I  would  not  have  her 
fall  into  a  kettle  of  tar  but  into  a 
wagonload  of  feather  beds,  that  I 
would  not  have  her  fall  at  all,  that 
I  would  not  write  a  humorous  story 
at  all,  that  I  would  not  write  at  all, 
and  that  I  would,  instead,  get  an 
empty  cigar  box  and  make  a  toy 
circus  wagon  for  my  young  son. 

I  once  made  an  entire  doll's  house, 
two  stories,  four  rooms,  kitchen  and 
bath,  with  hand-carved  stairways 
and  electric  lighting  throughout, 
the  walls  entirely  weatherboarded, 
put  inthecarpets,  papered  the  walls, 
hung  lace  curtains  at  the  windows 
and  painted  the  exterior,  and  all  be 
tween  two  paragraphs  of  a  story.  I 

page  22 


Goat  leathers 

spent  three  months  on  that  little 
trip  after  goat-feathers,  and  in  the 
meantime  Arnold  Bennett  prob 
ably  wrote  three  novels  of  several 
hundred  thousand  words  each, 
gained  an  international  reputation, 
and  passed  me  on  the  road  to  fame 
like  an  airplane  passing  a  snail. 
George  Ade  kept  pegging  away  at 
his  "Fables"  with  the  regularity 
of  a  day  laborer,  and  Peter  Finley 
Dunne  ground  out  his  f<  Mister 
Dooley"  like  an  unwearied  sau 
sage-grinder. 

On  my  wall,  alongside  my  desk, 
I  have  a  calendar,  and  the  sheet  that 
faces  me  is  that  for  the  first  week  in 
March,  1916.  It  says  "Concentra 
tion.  Concentrate  all  your  thoughts 
upon  the  work  in  hand.  The  sun's 

page  23 


Goat -leathers 

rays  do  not  burn  until  brought  to  a 
focus.  Alexander  G.  Bell."  That  is 
the  whole  matter  in  a  nutshell,  but 
the  only  use  the  motto  has  been  to 
me  has  been  to  permit  me  to  look 
at  it  and  think  about  it  when  I  ought 
to  be  thinking  of  the  story  I  was  try 
ing  to  write. 

So  far  as  I  am  concerned,  the 
most  important  person  in  the  world 
is  myself.  The  most  important  suc 
cess  in  the  world  is  my  success.  The 
most  important  money  in  the  world 
is  my  money.  A  whole  lot  of  the 
most  important  debts  in  the  world 
are  my  debts.  The  same  is  true  of 
you  and  your  success  and  your 
money  and  your  debts. 

I  hope  you  are  not  near-fifty 
years  old.  I  hope  you  are  nearer 

page  24 


Goat -leathers 

twenty,  but  whatever  your  age  I 
can  tell  you  that  chasing  after  goat- 
feathers  is  mighty  poor  business. 
The  time  to  investigate  interesting 
by-paths  is  when  you  are  on  a  va 
cation,  but  the  New  York-Chicago 
Express  gets  there  by  staying  on 
the  track.  The  minute  it  starts 
climbing  some  interesting  country 
lane  after  daisies  and  buttercups  the 
coroners  begin  to  gather  and  the 
claim  agents  flock  together,  and 
some  slow  but  sure  old  freight  train, 
plugging  along  on  the  next  track 
but  sticking  to  it,  toots  a  couple  of 
times  and  passes  by. 

If  I  am  ever  the  boss  of  a  school 
board  I  shall  insist  that  no  child 
graduate  until  he  can  foot  correctly 
a  pile  of  numbers  four  deep  and 

jage  25 


Goat -leathers 

forty  high,  and  do  it  the  first  time. 
I  have  been  a  bookkeeper  in  my 
day,  and  I  have  footed  a  column  of 
figures  twenty  times  and  got  ten 
different  results.  I  can  go  up  a  col 
umn  of  figures,  starting  like  a  race 
horse — "Seven  and  six  are  thir 
teen,  and  five  are  eighteen,  and  two 
are  twenty,  and  —  and  I  wonder  if 
I  put  a  stamp  on  the  letter  I  mailed 
this  morning  —  I  wonder  if  Bacon 
wrote  Shakespeare's  plays — I  won 
der  if  a  bomb  from  an  airplane 
would  go  through  from  the  roof  of 
my  house  to  the  cellar  —  cellar  — 
cellar  —  well,  I'm  glad  I've  got 
eight  tons  of  coal  in,  but  I  '11  have 
to  get  more  in  as  soon  as  I  can  — 
and  six  —  "  Then  I  have  to  begin 
at  the  beginning  again  with  "  Seven 

page  26 


Goat -leathers 

and  six  are  thirteen,  and  five  are 
eighteen — " 

The  reason  children  don't  get 
their  examples  right  in  school  is 
because  they  don't  concentrate  on 
the  matter  in  hand,  and  the  reason 
men  don't  get  their  lives  right  is  be 
cause  they  don't  concentrate  on 
the  matter  of  making  good  at  what 
they  know  is  the  business  of  their 
lives  —  success.  If  you  stop  a  mo 
ment  and  think  of  the  men  you 
know  who  are  not  successes,  but 
who  might  be  successes,  you  will 
find  they  are  goat-feather  gather 
ers.  Anything  that  leads  a  man 
aside  from  the  straight  path  to  his 
goal  is  a  goat-feather.  Every  use 
less  side  line  is  a  goat-feather.  Ev 
ery  unnecessary  distraction  is  a 

27 


Goat  leathers 

goat-feather.    Nine  tenths  of  the 
things  I  do  are  goat-feathers. 

I  don't  mind  telling  you  that  I 
consider  myself  a  very,  very  won 
derful  man.  Nobody  but  a  most  re 
markable  man  could  spend  so  much 
time  in  the  goat-feather  groves 
gathering  goat-feathers  and  still 
keep  his  family  from  starvation.  I 
actually  gasp  when  I  think  what  a 
great  man  I  should  have  been  if  I 
had  stuck  to  business  instead  of  be 
ing  drawn  aside  by  every  sweet 
odor  and  pleasant  sound.  Then  I 
actually  swear  when  I  think  how 
many  hours  and  days  and  weeks  I 
have  given  to  making  myself  look 
like  a  cross  between  a  llama  and  a 
stuffed  owl,  when  I  might  have 
been  writing  things  the  editors 

page  28 


Goat -leathers 

never  have  enough  of,  and  buy  as 
soon  as  they  read  the  first  para 
graph. 

It  is  all  right!  I  'm  not  jealous  ! 
I  '11  sit  in  the  front  row  every  time 
Ade  or  Tarkington  or  Chambers 
pulls  a  success,  and  I  '11  applaud  as 
whole-heartedly  as  any  one,  but  I 
reserve  the  right  to  kick  myself 
when  I  get  outside.  This  article  is 
one  of  the  kicks,  and  I  hope  it  will 
have  a  good  effect  on  me.  I  hope 
it  will  teach  me  a  lesson.  I  doubt 
it;  I'm  too  old;  I'm  too  accus 
tomed  to  chasing  goat-feathers  to 
give  it  up  now. 

So  there  you  have  the  story  of 
what  is  the  matter  with  me.  You 
know  now  why,  when  you  think  of 
me,  you  think  of  a  story  I  wrote 

page  29 


Goat  leathers 

twelve  years  ago.  I  had  a  main  goal, 
but  I  liked  too  well  to  investigate 
all  the  cross-roads  instead  of  keep 
ing  straight  on.  That's  bad;  that's 
gathering  goat-feathers .  It  has  been 
bad  for  me,  and  bad  for  my  success 
as  an  author,  and  bad  for  my  suc 
cess  in  the  only  life  I  have  to  live, 
but  it  is  apt  to  be  much  worse  for 
you  to  gather  goat-feathers  than  for 
me  to  gather  them,  because  I  can, 
occasionally,  weave  some  of  them 
into  a  story,  while  you  can't  do  any 
thing  at  all  with  those  you  acquire. 
The  time  we  waste  in  excursions 
off  the  main  line  of  our  road  to  our 
goal  is  the  difference  between  suc 
cess  and  half-success;  often  it  is 
the  difference  between  success  and 
failure. 

page  30 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last 
date  stamped  below 


Cg 
MAIN 


LOAN 


A  M. 

71  8' 9  lOlllllfel 


lOm-ll, '50(2555)470 


I  VED 

DESK 


•'  1554 


P.M. 

XI2I3I4I5I6 


OF 


A  000  923  478  2 


PS 

3503 

B97go 


